The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Forbes annual Highest Paid Actress list arrived this morning. It tracks income from films and merchandising and endorsement deals and so on and prints the (estimated conjecture) total before management fees and taxes are removed. The endorsements is why household name celebrities, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts, stay on the list for years and years after their peak bankable actressing. Here's the list if you don't want to have to click through the 19 page gallery. But you will have to click through 19 pages if you want to know just how each of these women is making so much bank.
David takes a look at the British cultural legacy of poshness as The Riot Club now out on DVD...
Before The Riot Club was a movie, it was a West End play called Posh. Laura Wade’s simple, cutting title gets right to the heart of the social crisis at the centre of her work, which presents a fictionalised version of Oxford’s infamous Bullingdon Club, whose members have included both the current British Prime Minister and Mayor of London. While the traumatic events of the play and film are invented, the social privilege they demonstrate is a British legacy that has lingered throughout history. It continues to be a talking point today, with British soap opera actor Danny Dyer memorably taking pot shots at ‘posh boy’ Benedict Cumberbatch and the social elitism of the British cultural industries. (Dyer’s complaints of elitism are perhaps reflected in some of The Riot Club’s casting – Max Irons (son of Jeremy) and Freddie Fox (son of Edward) both come from British acting dynasties.)
Britain’s exports and image abroad have been shaped by the likes of Merchant Ivory, Jane Austen and Downton Abbey as one steeped in this kind of privilege and elitism. Occasionally British films of a different kind will have a big enough cultural impact to surface in the timeline of world cinema, with the kitchen-sink dramas of the late 1950s and ‘60s perhaps the most notable instance. But it is the posh boys that have really dominated British cinema’s worldwide reputation, from Leslie Howard (the first cinematic Henry Higgins) through Hugh Grant to the current crop led by Eddie Redmayne and Cumberbatch.
But why is this model of Britishness so favoured internationally? [More...]
Another day, another fall movie releases a poster. Murtada here with the details.
Following the Beasts of No Nationtrailer, the character posters for the African war drama have arrived. The trailer told us a lot about the film by introducing its two main characters - played by Idris Elba and newcomer Abraham Atta - and the hypnotic dynamic between them in one brief scene. The striking but simple posters continue the efficient storytelling and with just a few pictures and words tell us all we need to know. For now...
Did you hear that the now 18 year old True Grit and Pitch Perfect 2 star has released a single? With "Love Myself" she becomes the first Oscar nominee to launch a music career since... um... wait, wait, it'll come to me.
Bruce Willis, Brie Larson, and Linday Lohan tried it years ago but they weren't Oscar nominees. Eddie Murphy and Kim Basinger did it briefly in the 80s but that was long before Oscar paid them any mind. Russell Crowe did it before becoming a movie star and kept on doing it. Jamie Foxx started recording years before the musical biopic Oscar win in Ray. Jared Leto abandoned the movies for quite a long time to be a rock star but that was also before Oscar love. Most recently Scarlett Johansson started a recording career but Oscar has yet to notice her. (sigh). Post Oscar Examples will come to me after we get back to our topic.
Anyway... Hailee has gone for an "I Touch Myself"/"She Bop" style single what with that Self-Service tank in the video for "Love Myself"
Hey, you'd turn yourself on, too, if you were Oscar-nominated for your debut film. Do tell us what you think of the video in the comments, won't you? (You may also recall that Hailee was the star of my choice for "best shot" from Taylor Swift's Bad Blood video)
Previous Actors To Launch Music Careers After Their Oscar Nominations I'd love this to be a comprehensive list but I'm sure I missed someone. Help if you can...
2000s
Minnie Driver's latest album "Ask Me To Dance" Toni Collette. Oscar nominated for The Sixth Sense (1999). Released one album "Beautiful Awkward Pictures" in 2006. You can also hear her great pipes on the Original Broadway Cast Album of Michael John Lachiusa's "Wild Party" Minnie Driver. Oscar nominated for Good Will Hunting (1997). Released her debut album "Everything I've Got in My Pocket" in 2004. Beautiful voice. She's since released two more albums. Juliette Lewis. Oscar nominated for Cape Fear (1991). Juliette and the Licks released their debut album in 2004 with their first hit "You're Speaking My Language" - damn that track was goood. She's since released three more albums. I miss her music. I listened to "Uh Huh" so much in 2010!
1980s
Isabelle Adjani. First Oscar nominated for The Story of Adele H. (1975). After a Cannes win for 2 roles and two Cesars for best actress in the early 80s she released her only album "Pull Marine" in 1983. Supposedly Luc Besson directed the only music video but it doesn't seem to exist on YouTube. *sniffle*
1970s
Bette Davis. Oscared twice over in the 1930s, she continued to rack up nominations through 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. She's a bit of a black sheep in this list though because she wasn't trying to start a recording career with her only album. She was nearing 70 years of age when producers asked her and she cut the album "Miss Bette Davis" which includes a few movie songs she's already sung onscreen.
1960s
Patty Duke. She won the supporting actress Oscar at 16 for her co-lead role in The Miracle Worker (1962). Afterwords she got her own television show, recorded albums and had two top forty hits.
1950s
Sal Mineo. First Oscar nominated for Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Released one pop album in 1957 at the heighth of his teen idol fame, from which he even had a top ten single. After that it was all acting again and another nomination for Exodus (1960).
What follows is a republishing of a piece I'm proud of from our very first season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot (you can see the index of all six seasons here) when I was somehow far more concise with "Best Shot" despite feeling like I was overdoing it. I've added in notes and links for contributions from other Best Shot participants and I'd like to thank Manuel heartily before we begin for his fascinating contextual work on HBO's long history of LGBT films and series this summer and for sharing this week's HBO LGBT episode with us for our redo episode of this Great Work. Read that piece before you read this. Ready? Let's begin...
Tony Kushner's extraordinary two part stage epic Angels in America centers around two overlapping young couples in the mid 80s, struggling married Mormons, pill popping Harper and her closeted husband Joe and the gay couple Louis and Prior they become connected spiritually (Harper befriends Prior... in her dreams) and physically (Joe becomes Louis's other lover). But it's also about politics, immigration, religion, identity, and evolution and encompasses multiple other characters from Louis's outspoken gay friend Belize, to Joe's mother, to the evil lawyer Roy Cohn, the dead Communist Ethel Rosenberg, and a frequently orgasmic Angel who descends on many of the players. This masterpiece was adapted for the screen in 2003 by Oscar winner Mike Nichols. Along its journey it won 7 Tonys, The Pulitzer, and later 5 Golden Globes and 11 Emmys and here's the thing: it deserved every single prize. If you haven't seen it drop everything (seriously everything) because it is unmissable. I've seen it performed on stage three times in three different states with wildly different budgets and casts and seen the miniseries a few times too... and every single time it's a fascinating prismatic living thing, like it will always be teaching you, entertaining you, and provoking you.
Rather than limit myself to one shot I'm picking one from each of its chapter. This I can manage!
Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 1:11PM 
